Getty Voices: Photographing with Abelardo Morell

How Tall Is It, a photograph by Mark Twain Middle School 8th-grader Ricki Todd

Throughout 2013, the Getty community participated in a rotation-curation experiment using the Getty Iris, Twitter, and Facebook. Each week a new staff member took the helm of our social media to chat with you directly and share a passion for a specific topic—from museum education to Renaissance art to web development. Getty Voices concluded in February 2014.—Ed.

“[Abe] taught us a lot of really good tricks, like how you express the emotion of the picture…how you can make something as ordinary as a raindrop look like a flood.”

The phrase “out of the mouths of babes oft times come gems” seems apt to describe the observations—and photographs—of twenty-three 8^th-grade students from Mark Twain Middle School. The Getty Museum’s Education Department teamed up with the school, along with 826LA and photographer Abelardo Morell for Community Photoworks, a Getty program that since 2006 has introduced students to the art of photography. This year, photographs the students created with the guidance of Morell (“Abe” to them) will be on view in a dedicated exhibition at Chalk design studio called The Awakening of the Ordinary, with an opening reception Thursday, December 5, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (And yes, the students created that awesome exhibition title.)

In one jam-packed month, the students met with Morell, who taught them about his photographic techniques such as the camera obscura, and walked them through his exhibition at the Getty. Then the students took their own pictures on assigned digital cameras, selected one photograph each to be printed and exhibited, and were mentored by 826LA and Getty volunteers and staff as they looked critically at their photographs and wrote their artist statements. At the exhibition, photographs will be curated and installed by the students themselves and accompanied by artist statements that further explain their intention and approach.

Mark Twain Middle School 8th graders viewing the Abelardo Morell exhibition at the Getty Center

Mark Twain Middle School student taking a picture at the Getty Center

I was lucky to be a part of the program, accompanying the students through their workshops with Morell and seeing their creativity and talent flourish.

The Darkened Illusion, photograph by Mark Twain Middle School 8th-grader Corianna Johnson

For more information about resources used in this program for students and educators, visit the Getty’s Classroom Resources page.